Jaguar’s Controversial New EV Has A Bizarre Battery Setup

Jaguar’s radical new electric sedan flips the script entirely.
Besides its controversial looks, the upcoming flagship adopts an interesting new battery layout.
Typically, EVs have one big battery pack mounted in the floor, but that means the driver and passengers have to sit high.

Jaguar’s monolithic electric sedan has already stirred up a lot of emotion, even though it won’t be revealed until this summer. The ad campaign for the Type 00 Concept led to a huge and silly controversy. But the company is pushing forward with its plan to become an all-electric ultra-luxury brand, and it’s leading the charge with a sedan based on the Type 00 design.

We still don’t know what the huge four-door sedan will look like, but Jaguar has finally revealed some concrete technical specifications. And as with the big marketing campaign, the company seems to be making some bold choices.

The biggest surprise is the battery arrangement. The next-generation Jaguar is going to be a long and wide beast, measuring over 204 inches (5.2 meters) long. But Jaguar was hellbent on keeping it low to the ground. That’s a challenge when designing an EV, as the large, central battery pack takes up space that would normally be used for passenger footwells. To avoid this, many large electric sedans raise the passengers up, giving them tall belt lines and chunky proportions.

Jaguar didn’t want that for its sleek flagship. The company managed to keep the electric sedan’s height below 43.3 in (1.4 m) by getting creative with the sedan’s battery packaging. According to Autocar, which had the chance to drive one of the 150 development prototypes, the upcoming super EV has a total battery capacity of around 120 kilowatt-hours, which should be enough for an EPA range of about 400 miles.

That’s mighty impressive, but Jaguar wanted to offer something that no other electric sedan currently has: a coupe-like seating position. It split the battery pack into five separate stacks–a 19 kWh pack near the front of the cabin and four 25 kWh stacks further back. This way, the footwells can be placed in the gaps, and the driver’s seating height is almost identical to the F-Type two-seater. That’s a big win.

Otherwise, details on the forthcoming EV remain scarce. There’s still no word on how fast Jaguar’s new EV will charge, but the newly developed JEA architecture is bound to support 800-volt systems, which should result in shorter charging stops. Power will also be plentiful, with three electric motors being offered as standard–two at the rear and one at the front–for a total output in excess of 1,000 horsepower.

Photo by: Jaguar

There’s also no front trunk and no rear window, with standard 23-inch wheels. So there are plenty of details that will be controversial, but that’s clearly part of Jaguar’s pivot to becoming a bolder, more high-end brand. No more half measures, no more trying to play catch-up with Mercedes-Benz and BMW. The company is trying to forge its own path in the luxury car market. Whether or not it will survive this shift is anyone’s guess, though.